Stereotypes: American Immaturity

By Daniel Miessler on August 19th, 2006: Tagged as America | Culture | Politics | Race

So this guy running for congressman in Louisianna is getting rocked for saying that many black people in Alabama don’t know how to swim. It’s a big deal with people saying it’s a stereotype, it’s not true, etc.

In other news, from a while back, the swimming requirement was dropped for cops in north Miami because it was seen as discriminatory against black people. Here’s what the black police chief had to say on the matter:

“Our swimming requirement may give the false perception that we are not serious in our efforts to hire Haitian police applicants,” police Chief Gwendolyn Boyd-Savage, who is black, wrote in a memo.

“They have been intimidated because they don’t swim; very few of them swim,” said Mayor Joe Celestin, who is Haitian-American. “They have the ability to learn how to swim, but many of them are not that great of a swimmer. … We want to bring them in and give them a chance to learn.”

Hmm, so the black police chief has to remove a swimming requirement so that black people can be cops, because, in his own words, “they don’t swim; very few of them swim.” But this guy in Louisiana says the same thing and gets called a racist.

This country needs to learn how to acknowledge differences without equating doing so to racism. Especially when the difference is clearly cultural and not racial.

This country needs to learn how to talk to itself like an adult. If we continue handling social tension like 4-year-olds we’re going to be facing major social upheaval in less than a decade.

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Steve 2 years ago 1 point
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After car accidents, drowning is the second-leading cause of accidental death among all children 14 and younger. Among African-American children, drowning rates are two to five times higher than for white children.

Black children drown 2.3 times more often than their white peers, according to studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among 10- to 14-year-olds, black children drown at five times the rate of white children.

Why do people get upset when there are numbers to back up the comments?
Why do people get worked up about this stuff, differences are either genetic, environmental, or cultural, end result is we all have our strength and weakness.
Its not the cards your dealt, but how you play the game.

Density of lean body mass is greater in blacks than in whites

Previous studies have reported that Blacks have 10-20% more bone mineral than Whites of the same height. Theoretically, this should mean that the lean body mass of Blacks is denser than that of Whites, such that formulas for calculating lean body mass from density in Whites will overestimate the lean body mass (and thus underestimate fatness) in Blacks. To determine if the lean body mass of Blacks is indeed denser than that of Whites, we measured density, total body water, and anthropometric dimensions in 19 white and 15 black male college students. The black and white cohorts were nearly identical in height, weight, and total body water. Among the Whites there was no significant difference between the observed density and that predicted from anthropometry, nor were there any significant differences between the dimensions of body composition calculated from total body water and from observed density. Among the Blacks, however, the observed density was significantly greater than that predicted from anthropometry, and the lean body mass calculated from observed density was significantly greater than that calculated from total body water. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the lean body mass of the Blacks is denser than that of the Whites. Separate formulas should therefore be used for converting density to body composition. Based on our data, the correct formula for Blacks is:

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